Millions of people around the world with a spinal cord injury, Parkinson’s disease, or a number of other conditions, can suffer debilitating social anxiety and risk of infection when they are unable to sense how full their bladder is.

Uri-Go is challenging that.

Uri-Go is the brainchild of Brendon Hale, Mike Brown, Andrew Cragg and Frank Kueppers, Grand Prize Winners of the biennial Callaghan Innovation C-Prize, held on Friday in the AUT Millennium.

Uri-Go presented the judging panel with a wearable sensor that uses radio waves to detect how full a person’s bladder is. The promise of drastically restoring confidence, control and health to millions with a simple yet highly-innovative hardware solution significantly impressed the judges.

Southern Cross Health Society champions innovation in health technology and is proud to have partnered with Callaghan Innovation to sponsor the ‘Live Healthier’ category. As part of the Grand Prize, the Uri-Go team won support worth $100,000 to develop and market their product.

Southern Cross Health Society CEO, Nick Astwick was one of the key judges to decide the winner. He sat through the powerful presentations by teams tackling very difficult problems. Excited by what he saw to be the future of health technology innovation in New Zealand, he commented on the future role Southern Cross might play with these innovations. “I saw two or three magical things that could potentially align with our wellbeing proposition, and together we could empower Kiwis to live their healthiest lives”.

To view the Facebook videos that were streaming live from the event, click here.